Sunday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to Sabbath for goyische cats: Sunday, April 26, 2026, and the day o0f the Turkmen Racing Horse Festival:

The Turkmen Racing Horse Festival is annually held on the last Sunday in April. This year, it takes place on April 26. While it is an important holiday, one of national pride, it remains a working Sunday for many in Turkmenistan, with schools and offices remaining open. Before we plunge into the why of this holiday though, a brief geography lesson. Turkmenistan — not to be confused with the separate nation of Turkey — is a country located in the southwest region of Central Asia. Its neighbors are Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Iran, and Uzbekistan. It also touches the Caspian Sea, along its western border. Horses are an integral part of Turkmenistan’s history and culture, hence there is an entire season dedicated to horse racing. The pride and joy of Turkmenistan is the Akhal-Teke breed of horse, said to be one of the oldest breeds in the world.

Here’s a one-minute video abut the Festival:

It’s also Alien Day, celebrating the 1979 movie Aliens, and “Alien Day is held on April 26 because one of the planetoids or moons in the Alien films is named LV-426″. Audurbon Day (the illustrator and ornithologist, now in bad odor, was born on this day in 1785), National Pretzel Day, and World Intellectual Property Day (I just got a few hundred bucks because some bot stole from my trade books and got sued).

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 26 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

Breaking news: There was an attempt to assassinate the President at the White House Correspondents’ dinner, but it failed.

Investigators were working on Sunday to determine a motive in the shooting that sent Secret Service agents rushing President Trump from the stage at the White House correspondents’ dinner, an attack that raised questions about how a gunman was able to get close to one of Washington’s most heavily guarded events.

The suspect, identified by two law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, Calif., was taken into custody after running through a security checkpoint and exchanging gunfire with the authorities inside the Washington Hilton on Saturday night. Officials said he did not reach the ballroom, where Mr. Trump, top administration officials and hundreds of journalists had gathered.

Late Saturday night, federal authorities in the Los Angeles suburbs surrounded a two-story home where records show Mr. Allen lives. Residents gathered nearby on darkened sidewalks as police helicopters circled overhead and law enforcement vehicles with flashing red and blue lights blocked the street.

The suspect was armed with knives, a shotgun and a handgun and had been staying at the Washington Hilton, the interim Washington, D.C., police chief, Jeffery W. Carroll, told reporters on Saturday night. He said that the authorities were still investigating whether the suspect had targeted the president, but that they believed he had acted alone.

Trump and Melania were escorted out of the event. A Secret Service agent was hit, but apparently saved by his bulletproof vest.

*Trump has called off further negotiations with Iran, canceling Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner’s trip to Pakistan:

President Trump on Saturday called off a trip by two of his top negotiators to Islamabad, Pakistan, just before they were set to leave for talks about a potential deal to end the war in Iran.

“I’ve told my people a little while ago, they were getting ready to leave, and I said, ‘Nope, you’re not making an 18-hour flight to go there. We have all the cards,’” Mr. Trump said in a statement. “They can call us anytime they want, but you’re not going to be making any more 18-hour flights to sit around talking about nothing.”

Steve Witkoff, the special envoy, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, had been scheduled to travel to Pakistan on Saturday, along with top aides to Vice President JD Vance. Officials in Pakistan have been mediating between the United States and Iran to try to end more than a month of war in the Middle East.

The cancellation of the trip is the latest sign that Iran and the United States are far from reaching a deal to end the war. A previous trip to Islamabad by Mr. Vance proved unsuccessful, and the Americans appear no closer to achieving the administration’s political goals, including convincing Iran to turn over its nuclear stockpile and curtail its future program. The two sides are also locked in a stalemate over control of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil supply flows.

Mr. Trump’s decision came after Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, who had been in Islamabad for talks with Pakistani officials, left the country and traveled to Oman. No direct meetings had been scheduled with U.S. officials.

After leaving Islamabad, Mr. Araghchi said in a social media post that he had shared with Pakistani officials Iran’s position on a “workable framework to permanently end the war on Iran.” He did not give details of the latest proposal. “Have yet to see if the U.S. is truly serious about diplomacy,” he added.

Given the distance between the negotiating parties, and the untenable nature of Iran’s demands, right now it seems useless to try negotiating. Let’s see what happens. Prices throughout the world will go up (gas prices in Chicago are already about $5.25 per gallon), so this remains a test of the ability of each side to play a game of what amounts to economic chicken.

*The NYT has an interview with three entitled people (including the wealthy and odious antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker) about why it’s okay to steal from capitalists: “The rich don’t play by the rules. So why should I?” Here we see the antisemitic content streamer Hasan Piker,  The NYT Opinion culture editor Nadja Spiegelman (daughter of graphic novelist Art Spiegelman), and New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino  discuss the circumstances in which they’d break the law to steal from the rich (see also the Free Press article on this unsavory trio; the NYT article is archived here). There is also a video.  We can assume that at least two of these discussants are rich. Piker is a multimillionaire, and The FP says that Tolentino:”lives in a $2.2 million brownstone in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn when she’s not at her second home upstate”, and Grok reports that Spiegelman ears a six-figure income as well as being co-owner of two NYC properties, including a SoHo condo. We can assume they are not starving, but they’re willing to steal—and not always for a good cause.

A couple of quotes:

Spiegelman: Would you pirate music from an indie band?

Tolentino: Is it 2005 and I’m using LimeWire? Because yes.

Spiegelman: I feel like every millennial has at some point.

Tolentino: I mean, I feel like, fundamentally, Spotify is kind of deleterious to the musician livelihood, and I use that, but then I go to the shows.

Piker: Yeah, I’m pro-piracy all the way, like, across the board. Would you pirate a car? Yes. You know, if you could.

Spiegelman: What would it mean to pirate a car?

Piker: It was just a classic thing back in the day. The government-funded antipiracy initiatives would be like: Would you steal a car? I’m like, yeah, sure. If I could get away with it, if it was as easy as pirating intellectual property, I would do it.

. . .Spiegelman: Yeah. Would you steal a book from the library?

Tolentino: Never.

Piker: No.

Spiegelman: Would you steal from the Louvre?

Piker: Yes.

Tolentino: I would not be logistically capable of executing such a fact, but would I cheer on every news story of people that I see doing it? Absolutely.

Piker: I think it’s cool. We’ve got to get back to cool crimes like that: bank robberies, stealing priceless artifacts, things of that nature. I feel like that’s way cooler than the 7,000th new cryptocurrency scheme that people are engaging in.

Spiegelman: Would you steal from Whole Foods?

Tolentino: Yes. And I have, under very specific circumstances. I will say, I think that stealing from a big box store — I’ll just state my platform — it’s neither very significant as a moral wrong, nor is it significant in any way as protest or direct action. But I did steal from Whole Foods on several occasions.

Tolentino steals from Whole Foods (she calls it “mircrolooting”), but only to give the food to others:

Tolentino: But I didn’t feel bad about it at all.

Spiegelman: And was part of it because of how you feel about Whole Foods as a corporation?

Tolentino: Yeah. It already felt like a bit of a compromise. At the time I was like, I had not been to Whole Foods. I had a bit more consumer discipline about where I was spending my money then, and I already felt like I was in the hole, even by shopping there. And it certainly felt, in a utilitarian sense, I was like, this is not a big deal. Right, guys?

. . .Spiegelman: There’s one thing that’s stealing when you are a teenager and you want the adrenaline rush. And part of it is about testing the rules and getting away with something. But what I’m seeing on TikTok and social media is people saying that they’re stealing from Whole Foods not just for the thrill of it, but out of a feeling of anger and moral justification. Because the rich don’t play by the rules, so why should I? And Jeff Bezos has too much money — he’s a billionaire — so why should I have to pay for organic avocados?

My friends and I have started calling this microlooting, because it has a slight political valence to theft, as opposed to just the thrill of getting away with something. Have you noticed this around you online? Have you noticed more people talking about stealing in this way?

Murder, they say, seems justified by many:

. . . Spiegelman: But then when you feel this much anger — and it doesn’t feel like there’s hope for it to be changed in a regulatory way — I think that’s when you get to things like Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing the C.E.O. of United Healthcare, and there being an outpouring of glee for murder online, because it feels like, finally, someone can actually do something about health care.

I think 41 percent of Gen Z-ers felt that murder was morally justified. But it’s scary to be in a society where people feel that murder is morally justified. And I’m curious how we thread that line.

Piker: Yeah. Friedrich Engels wrote about the concept of social murder. And Brian Thompson, as the United Healthcare C.E.O., was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder. The systematized forms of violence, the structural violence of poverty, the for-profit, paywalled system of health care in this country — and the consequences of that are tremendous amounts of pain, tremendous amounts of violence, tremendous amounts of deaths. And that was a fascinating story for me, because Americans are very draconian about crime and punishment. They’re very black and white on this issue.

And yet, because of the pervasive pain that the private health care system had created for the average American, I saw so many people immediately understand why this death had taken place.

. . . Tolentino: One thing that should be legal that isn’t — it’s interesting, because I have to regularly explain this stuff to a small child, and have so thoroughly explained to her that some things are against the rules, but they’re OK, depending on who you are. And some things are not against the rules, but they’re not OK. There are so many perfectly legal things I do regularly that I find mildly immoral. Like getting iced coffee in a plastic cup. I find that to be a profoundly selfish, immoral, collectively destructive action. I have taken so many planes for so many pleasure reasons; I have acted in so many selfish ways that are not only legal, but they’re sanctioned and they’re unbelievably valorized, culturally. So, maybe things like blowing up a pipeline, let’s say that.

These are the people who will lead the Revolution, and who are active on the “progressive” Left.

*Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was demonized by the Southern Poverty Law Center a few years back, is glad that the SPLC has now come to a reckoning. The writes at the Free Press:

I was placed on an SPLC blacklist in October 2016. The document was called “A Journalist’s Manual: Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists.” My name appeared beside Maajid Nawaz, a reformed radical who ran a counter-extremism organization, and an array of figures also dedicated to combating Islamism and antisemitism, such as David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes. The list handed journalists a ready-made roster of 15 people whose views were to be seen as toxic. But to call it a mere reference guide is to understate what it was.

It was published at the peak of a jihadist campaign of terror against the West. The ISIS caliphate still held territory across Syria and Iraq. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was issuing hit lists of writers and cartoonists in its English-language magazine. In January 2015, two of AQAP’s followers walked into the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris and murdered 12 people, some of them cartoonists whose offense was drawing. Ten months later, a coordinated ISIS cell killed 130 at Paris’s Bataclan theater and the cafés around it. Terror attacks in Brussels, Nice, Berlin, and Manchester soon followed.

This was the climate in which the SPLC chose to publish the names, faces, and affiliations of 15 people it accused of “anti-Muslim extremism.” The list endangered everyone it named. I know the threat of Islamist violence all too well. In 2004, a jihadist named Mohammed Bouyeri murdered my friend and collaborator Theo van Gogh on an Amsterdam street. Bouyeri shot him, cut his throat, and pinned a five-page letter to his chest with a knife. The letter was a fatwa against me. I have lived under armed protection for more than two decades because men with weapons and conviction want me dead—for apostasy; for writing about Islamist-driven antisemitism and the subversive actions of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups in the West; for drawing attention to practices such as honor killings and female genital mutilation; for arguing that Muslim women deserve the same protections under the law as other women.

The SPLC considers all of this beyond the pale, and accused me of using “the political bully pulpit to bash Muslims.”

Thus, an organization founded to combat bigotry chose to place me on a list together with others whose lives were already under threat from the same movements, just for having the audacity to combat Islamist bigotry.

Nawaz sued the group, and won. In June 2018, the SPLC settled for $3.4 million and issued a written apology. The field guide vanished from its website. No apology was ever extended to me or to the others unfairly placed on that list.

. . . But ruining reputations was, and remains, only one of many offenses.

In 2000, the journalist Ken Silverstein published a long investigation in Harper’s Magazine describing the SPLC as the wealthiest civil rights organization in America, one whose fundraising had grown to dwarf its legal work. CharityWatch later gave the organization an F for stockpiling donations it did not spend on its stated mission. Tax filings uncovered by reporters in 2017 showed millions in SPLC money parked in the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, and Bermuda. Think of it for a moment: an anti-poverty organization, headquartered in Alabama, hiding millions offshore while positioning itself as the nation’s moral conscience. That should have ended it. Instead, the donors kept giving, and the lists kept growing.

I’m surprised that Hirsi Ali didn’t sue the SPLC like Nawaz did. The organization apparently ran out of civil rights cases to prosecute, and so began sniffing out what they construed as “hate groups” that didn’t violate anybody’s civil rights.

*Speaking of the SPLC, the conservative National Review says that even if the government charges against it are bogus, “The SPLC was always awful” and “deserves to be shunned and marginalized” (archived article).

A grand jury returned an indictment charging the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) with financial crimes, suggesting that the organization — which claims its mission is to “dismantle white supremacy” and fight discrimination broadly — has secretly paid informants to participate in the groups it deemed “racist” or hateful, as well as organize activities under the guise of these groups, such as the “United the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va. If the allegations are true, then it means that SPLC has been coordinating some of the very events it raises funds to fight against — and as anyone familiar with the organization knows, it then construes those demonstrations as representative of the entire right-wing coalition.

But here’s a challenge: Engage in a hypothetical and assume, purely for the sake of argument, that absolutely everything alleged in the indictment is completely false. Even if the SPLC neither committed financial crimes nor helped orchestrate bogus “hate” events to create bad optics for conservatives, the organization has long been deserving of ire. The SPLC is societal poison dedicated to disparaging any individual or group perceived as even mildly right-wing. Rather than bashing the SPLC because it allegedly misrepresented its organizational activities and use of funds, we should emphasize that the SPLC misrepresents everything all the time.

For those unfamiliar, the SPLC is well known for awarding the “hate” label to certain organizations or individuals. While these designations might seem negligible, they have facilitated actual hate: Floyd Lee Corkins II was motivated to attempt a mass shooting and “kill as many people as [he] could” at the Family Research Council’s headquarters, in part because he had identified the organization as anti-gay from the SPLC website.

One might have hoped such an awful incident would have prompted the SPLC to reconsider its “hate” labels, and that the mainstream media would refrain from referencing such designations carelessly. However, high-profile publications routinely cite the SPLC-issued “hate” badge as if it is some sort of assessment grounded in a rigorous methodology. An article will read as follows: “[Right-Wing Organization], which has been named a “hate group” by the SPLC, blah blah blah.” (See here for an example about the Family Research Council in the New York Times, which was published after the terrorist attack on the organization.)

The scandal raises urgent questions about the integrity of the SPLC’s broader work, particularly its influential Hate Map, which began as a tool for tracking armed militias and skinhead gangs. Over time, it expanded to include mainstream conservative and religious organizations such as the Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, Moms for Liberty, and the Center for Immigration Studies. In August 2012, a man named Floyd Lee Corkins walked into the Family Research Council headquarters in Washington, D.C., carrying a gun. A security guard named Leo Johnson stopped him and was shot in the process. Corkins told the FBI he chose his target using the SPLC’s map. The organization never acknowledged what its list had set in motion.

The SPLC promulgates falsehoods — or what progressives might call “misinformation” — not only when borderline defaming individuals and organizations, but in its attempts to refute the claims set forth by those people and groups. In one article, the SPLC insists that “sterilization” is merely “an alleged medical risk” (emphasis mine) of “gender-affirming health care for children,” which is based on “myths, pseudoscience, and flawed historical comparisons to eugenics.” The SPLC further asserts that children are not receiving procedures that would render them infertile, nor does hormonal therapy pose fertility risks. This is difficult to reconcile with the fact that a reality-television show revealed to the world that Jazz Jennings, a male, underwent (botched) surgeries to construct a pseudo-vagina before age 18. Then there’s all the scientific data and personal anecdotes about how hormonal therapy can lead to infertility. Even Planned Parenthood produced materials for students as young as middle-schoolers conceding that puberty-blocking drugs may have long-term fertility consequences, saying they “might change someone’s body permanently, like affecting whether they can get or cause a pregnancy when they are older.” In another post, the SPLC claims that “anti-transgender” and right-wing individuals rely on “junk science” and “disinformation” — ignoring piles of evidence to prove that the so-called studies in support of medicalized gender interventions are not only wrong, but entirely nonsense. (For more thorough descriptions of large-scale scientific reviews on “gender-affirming care,” see some of my reporting here and here and here.)

Like the ACLU (which still does good stuff), the SPLC was once engaged in a honorable mission, but that mission has become ideologically tainted. It’s not clear whether the government’s charges that the organization gave money to informants, enriching the very organizations it was spying on, will hold water. But even if they don’t, the SPLC has outlived its usefulness, and I would be glad if it disappeared.

*The AP’s reliable “oddities” section reports that three people in California donned bear suits and then damaged their cars, all to get insurance money by pretending that the damage was ursine rather than human. They were caught:

Three people in California have been sentenced for insurance fraud in a bizarre scam that involved someone dressed in a bear costume damaging luxury cars.

The California Insurance Department said the three used a person in a bear suit to stage fake attacks inside a Rolls-Royce and two Mercedes in 2024, then submitted fraudulent claims seeking nearly $142,000 in payouts from insurance companies. The department called it “Operation Bear Claw.”

Two Los Angeles-area men and a woman pleaded no contest to felony insurance fraud and were sentenced to a weekend jail program, followed by probation, the department said in a news release Thursday. Two of them were ordered to pay over $50,000 in restitution.

A fourth person faces a court hearing in September.

The group is accused of providing several videos from the San Bernardino Mountains of a bear moving inside the vehicles to the insurance companies as part of their damage claims, the department said. Photos provided by the insurance department show what appeared to be scratches on the seats and doors.

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A California Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist reviewed the footage and concluded it was “clearly a human in a bear suit,” the insurance department said.

After executing a search warrant, detectives found the bear costume in the suspects’ home, the department said.

A news video showing the suit. Opposable thumbs!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, two geezers commiserate:

Hili: Once, the world was better.
Andrzej: Not exactly, but we were younger and stronger.

In Polish:

Hili: Dawniej świat był lepszy.
Ja: Nie bardzo, ale my byliśmy młodsi i silniejsi.

*******************

From Meow Incorporated:

From The Language Nerds (there’s one typo):

From Now That’s Wild:

From Masih; four Iranian women protestors waiting to be hanged (for protesting):

These 4 women receive death sentences simply for demanding freedom in Iran and right now sitting in prison, waiting to be hanged.
Where are the left and Liberal in America?
Why are the leaders of feminists movement so quiet?
Where are the progressive leaders?

So let me get this… https://t.co/5T2DF7gE8d pic.twitter.com/9g1FG3NMFD

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) April 22, 2026

From Luana:  I’m not a huge fan of Francis Widdowson, but it’s wrong, and a violation of free speech (which Canada apparently doesn’t allow) to demonize (and arrest) her for questioning whether the bodies of indigenous people have been buried when there is simply no evidence that this claim is true.

This is a political arrest. There are NO MASS GRAVES of indigenous students.
Questioning the narrative is heresy.
Shut people up by arresting them for trespassing. https://t.co/5RWlmOvyft

— Peter Boghossian (@peterboghossian) April 26, 2026

From Cate: a squirrel eating a chicken wing–in Chicago! I knew they were a bit carnivorous, but not this carnivorous!

This is in #Chicago.
They said he had a 6-wing, fried hard, with salt n’ pepper and mild sauce.
😂 pic.twitter.com/r9hUPU7gVj

— C.W. Harris (@cwharris773) April 24, 2026

Two from my feed: a crow helps the hedgehog cross the road. But did it get over the ledge?

A bird explains to a hedgehog that it has to cross the road so it doesn’t die. pic.twitter.com/WXtwAQUqE0

— The Figen (@TheFigen_) April 25, 2026

From Barry; a vampire cat:

“Hush now, be still. Soon you shall be one of us.”

— Uncle Duke (@uncleduke1969.bsky.social) 2026-04-24T12:58:07.644Z

Elephant kisses girl, girl gives elephant pineapple, girl kisses elephant.

Pure kisses… pic.twitter.com/4qbxKAdxO8

— Nature 🦜and Music 🎶 (@GuGi263) April 25, 2026

One I reposted from the Auschwitz Memorial

This Hungarian Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he got to Auschwitz. He was 14 years old. https://t.co/BVvbt6RgoQ

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) April 26, 2026

From Matthew; Katie Mack is a physicist and science communicator.  See the link for the quoted post, which is about relativity being necessary to use GPS satellites accurately.

When Einstein developed general relativity the closest thing to a practical application that could even be imagined at the time was a slightly more precise description of where to look for the planet Mercury in the sky, and yet now we’d all be literally lost without it.Anyway: fund basic research.

— Katie Mack (@astrokatie.com) 2026-04-23T13:01:20.978Z